


Needing So Much More Than Dusting

by AquitaineQueen24



Category: Beauty and the Beast (1991), Beauty and the Beast (2017)
Genre: And all that entails, F/M, Post-Canon, Pre-Canon, a character study for Plumette, and all hot and bothered, and in canon, and one for Lumiere, human again, plus getting down and dirty, relearning everything
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-03-20
Updated: 2017-04-06
Packaged: 2018-10-08 02:52:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 6,133
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10376229
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AquitaineQueen24/pseuds/AquitaineQueen24
Summary: "We have to remain strong.""How can I be strong when you make me so weak...?"It’s all too much, so after the first rush of rejoicing is over they must relearn themselves and each other. Fingers, Lumiere has forgotten his clever fingers. They must wake them up, rub them warm between her own fingers that can remember holding, clutching.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Being the story formally known as 'You Make Me So Weak.'

Plumette’s never ventured this thought to anyone. She wishes she wouldn’t think it so often and that, if anyone _else_ has thought of it (quite probably, it’s an inevitable sort of thought) they don’t dwell on it as often as she does.

The thought is this: the Prince is _so_ damned lucky. At least he still has flesh blood bone hair nails, he still breathes, he can still eat and drink, walk in the gardens and see above the hedges without getting drowned in the snow, run after deer. He can wear clothes, if he puts his mind to it. He can feel anything almost _exactly_ as he would be able to when he was human, it’s just than it happens to be through a layer of fur. Not as if his fingers are bare bones made of hardly more than air. There are such things he can do still, that he could before the curse, if only he wasn’t so, so, **_so._**

He can sleep.

When these thoughts come, she’ll set out on her own to flit through the corridors, away from any eyes or even no eyes because that’s how _she’s_ lucky. She still has eyes she can open and close, that’s more than Chapeau has; she can fly and move like the wind which is more than Cogsworth and certainly Mrs. Potts can do; she has wings and feathers which, though they feel so hollow and delicate, still move fluidly, while Lumiere has elbows and wrists and technically hands (all of which he can work magic with) but no fingers.

She feels as if she barely stirs the air.

 

* * *

 

Which is why there are such things she must discover again when she goes to –

not sleep, and she doesn’t go to it, she’s dragged towards the end

-when she falls into the hard and cold in Lumiere’s arms and then wakes up in a bed of feathers of what was once her tail, with her

**_heart_ **

banging up through her throat, squeezing in her jaw and about her eyes, and when Lumiere’s arms come about her once more, oh, _his_ heart is there too beneath cloth flesh bone blood, and a third beat from nowhere throbs between her legs, sparks in his wig, _too much._

It’s all too much, so after the first rush of rejoicing is over they must relearn themselves and each other. Fingers, Lumiere has forgotten his clever _fingers_. They must wake them up, rub them warm between her own fingers that can remember holding, clutching. She’s has just enough experience of touch during the long curse that she can keep her eyes open through the pleasure. He nearly pulls her down to the marble from the feel of it all.

Breathing. Breath. She’d never thought she’d miss not having to take a breath, when she’s so dizzy and heavy that now they have to sit down, no choice, because her legs are also not that clever any more. But breath has the compensation of Lumiere gasping hot on her face and cold on her lips, then tickling her neck with, yes, his hair but also with his sighs, panting. She gets a hand under his wig to sink her fingers through his true hair; to pull him further into her and also to, yes _yes_ , to work the wig free of the pins and off his head.

 

(She’d also thought throughout the years that all the servants were lucky compared to the Prince, that they could still touch each other, in what friendship and love their bodies would allow the minds trapped inside to make. Who could ever have dared to touch the Prince?

Merciful of the Enchantress, perhaps, that while they lost their flesh they didn’t miss it with an utter agony, because there was little to feel the agony with. It would have been a _long_ concealment from the outside world, if they had been trapped with all this desire and little or no fingers.)

 

It’s not a case of him _only_ wanting softness and cool damp yielding, or her needing hardness and heat after years of floating, it’s not even what they want the most. Still he tastes her now that he can finally _taste_ something, she brings her leg up between his to feel him hard against her, breathless against her.

Later for that, later. There are other things to relearn, like the other less comfortable hardness of the marble pressing through her supports and petticoats into her hip. Her muscles are starting to protest with twinges, and her body seems to have decided quite by itself that she will very soon need to eat, relieve herself (how, when she hasn’t drunk anything in years?) and sleep, in rapid succession. She will have to get used to that again, the demands of the flesh.

“You make me,” Lumiere says, and does not say weak, not this time, hot fingers into her hair and smooth against her scalp, clever, busy, learning.

 


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> 'Leave them thinking better of her, with their joy and mouths and fingers and thumbs and full bellies and little to do, for just today.'

A feast’s sprung from nowhere. Enough to feed all of them, and the villagers who came creeping back. Just appeared in one of the main courtyards. Cogsworth thinks “Probably another curse,” and they each must take him by an elbow and pull him along.

 It quickly turns into Lumiere almost holding up her off the floor while towing their, their _friend_. Her legs are being very silly at present.

She can understand Cogsworth. All the trouble that _one_ rose caused, never mind a whole banquet! It’s just that he’s wrong. She thinks but does not say, it’s possibly the Enchantress’s - not her _apology_. It’s a gift, a farewell present. If she’s rude about it (and if she is, it’s certainly only in her own head) - maybe it’s a sneaky bribe. Leave them thinking better of her, with their joy and mouths and fingers and thumbs and full bellies and little to do, for just today.

She’s had time to notice a distinct lack of dust, which makes her even happier. Some of the others have come back talking about fully stocked larders, sparkling windows and perfect gardens and fresh sheets on the beds! Not just the Prince’s bed either, probably all of them. And again, the feast none of them had to worry about preparing or arranging. It’s one last bit of magic, maybe. A goodbye as time starts up again. One glorious day between being servants and back to being servants. Being quite free.

Thereare  porcelain plates so they can take as much as they want and come away. There’s no order, no procession and placement of courses, nothing to be placed and taken away again. The Prince doesn’t even stay for them to watch him eat, he’s sitting in one of the alcoves with Lady Belle, nothing but talking and holding her hands, kissing her palms in full sight of everyone as thought he’d like to eat them instead.

She piles her plate for Lumiere more than herself, she could hardly eat a thing. She’d much rather to go off with him like the Prince and Lady Belle have done, or Garderobe and Cadenza who charged in for champagne and clattered back out at once. Even like Mrs. Potts and Chip with Monsieur Jean, barely letting go of each other for a heart beat. Not even a blink. But Madame Cogsworth is still very much here and Cogsworth would very much prefer that she wasn’t, or that he wasn’t, and Lumiere doesn’t want to leave him alone and she doesn’t either, truly, so.

They all end up near one of the fountains. She perches on the rim while Lumiere sprawls and Cogsworth sits on a bench, trembling with not touching his wife. She almost quits her seat for the shade because the sunlight is so hot and growing hotter in her hair, on the backs of her hands.

Lumiere’s fingers are learning slowly, to his great embarrassment: “I am most ashamed,” he says as he tries to get the wig straight. Madame Cogsworth only nods.

She pins the wig back into place for him. Pats it into some dignity again. He can catch and stroke about her face or hold a spoon (if it’s wedged tight enough between his thumb and the rest) but a knife’s that little bit much him for now.

She comes down from her perch and settles herself nearly on his lap to feed him. She tells him to let her do it: “I will do it. I want to do it.” She holds leaves of salad for him, orange slices, a boiled egg and then another when he says how he’s missed them. He kisses her fingertips; his lips are too soft and loving to let her get more than a touch of his teeth and tongue.

Cogsworth is doing his best not to look as he divides up some bread (and chicken) with his wife. Well, she’s sorry for that, but not sorry enough that she won’t keep feeding Lumiere scraps of food fit for a prince. (Or only fit for _their_ Prince; make of that what you will.) And in any case, they aren’t scraps from someone noble’s meal but ones that she’s making herself, tearing up the beef for him, soft enough that there’s no call for a knife. The village woman from another time and world can stare all she wants. He’s her man and he’s earned the best, he was strong and carried them for so long, it’s her turn.

He wakes up a bit from the pleasure to stop her rending the meat any further. “You’ll burn your fingers,” he says. Before he realises.

That is so _funny!_ She wraps her arms round his neck, tugs so his back meets and squashes her breasts, nose first into his wig by mistake before she can find his forehead to kiss it. Cogsworth’s risen and loudly declares he’s going for a walk; “Will you join me, Madame,” which manages to be enough of whatever she’s looking for that _of course_ Madame will.

And she really must find some way of thanking her friend - when she’s not saying, close to Lumiere’s ear (can she smell smoke from his wig again) her fingers and most of all their tips are very much unharmed, how sweet you are to worry about them, no need for concern, while she works a finger through his neck cloth's folds to reach his skin.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Lumiere is not in this one, Belle is and the Prince technically is.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning: use of a period appropriate discriminatory term describing a biracial person.

She almost doesn’t know how she came to be here, only that she flitted from Lumiere’s side for only a moment that became longer, and now she sees that Belle has the Prince’s head so safe in her lap, not seeming to mind what must be his shoulder digging into her leg. She’s stroking him, barely carding her nails through his hair.

(A very treasonous thought, but: what, will she be scratching his _ears_ next?)

It’s such a private thing. She would never have dared intrude before, might not tomorrow when everything is quite back to the way it was. But today, today she died, woke up again in her own tail feathers with her wings gone and fingers in their place, and she has her Lumiere, all of him. Besides which, if she leaves it too late then it’ll lose all its power and be just a hollow speech.

“I had wanted,” she says without waiting for notice or acknowledgement, although she does at least say it quietly, “to thank you for all you’ve done, for saving us. But that just makes it sound like it was a duty for you. An obligation. That would be wrong.”

Belle looks up at her. Confusion. Not (she thinks) the blank face of the noble who doesn’t understand _why_ the furniture has started talking. More (she hopes) because Belle’s grown so used to hearing and seeing her voice coming from a carven beak. But then her cheeks grow soft in a smile. She’s started on _such_ a crop of freckles in this first day in the sun for ages, **years.**

“It’s,” Belle says. That’s all. The spell lifted, the sun out, the Prince dead to the world in her lap and this marvellous miraculous girl doesn’t know what on earth to say anymore.

She gets to her knees on Belle’s free side, without the Prince’s legs in the way, keeping her skirts away from his head lest he should wake. She reaches out. Belle keeps her right hand in his hair, grips with her left so tight for a beat that she’s thinking no, careful, my wing my _wing_ it’ll be broken.

The girl holds on like she’s reaching for help. Not for a rescue from the great lump **(treason!)** pinning her down. It’s just wanting assurance that this is real, truly.

She squeezes back; yes _, yes,_ it’s real, I’ve got you and it’s real.

“It’s hard to believe,” Belle still says anyway. “That everyone’s free, you’re all free, and somehow it was something ** _I_** did. I nearly destroyed everything!”

“You darling thing. You treasure,” she tells the girl, but Belle reels her down to end up sitting beside her, legs crooked awkwardly to not brush and wake the Prince.

Belle says, looking down at her hand in his hair, but really at nothing at all, “I’m _terrified.”_

It _had_ been true love. Nothing but his love for another and their love in return could have broken the curse, God does she know about that. And yet. Possible to love someone and still live in terror of them, or keep far away for fear of what loving them will bring. She knows a thing or two about that as well. All she asks is “Of what?”

If Belle could pull his head up to rest on her breast without waking him, she’d do it. “I love him _so_ much. So dearly. And he died in my _arms_ , without any way I could help, all I could do was cry”

( _thump_ and there’s a sick feeling in the stomach, the need to swallow before she vomits all over her skirts)

“and now I’m afraid. I think I’ll spend the rest of my life being afraid. That something else will take him from me.”  Belle takes each breath as hard as she dares, trying to be quiet, trying not to cry. “I was helping him to plan a ball not even an hour ago, and then I’ve just been watching him while he’s sleeping. Watching him _breathe._ Measuring how long each one takes. Waiting to see if he stops.”

They watch the Prince sleep for quite a few beats of her heart; which is beating very fast at the moment since it and near every other part of her is crying with the need to run and find Lumiere

(she left him she has left him _alone_ )

only she still has Belle by the hand, tight.

When about thirty beats are gone, that is when their hands slide through each other, so that Belle can lift some straggling hair from his face, lest he wake. His head turns and the rest of him follows. he ends up on his back held up by her legs, his face up, looking direct into Belle’s lowered one if only he were awake.

He looks just like a sweet boy while he’s asleep.

She recalls mornings where she’d opened the curtains of his room to find him snoring in bed, sprawled on his front with the night’s remains all over his face. Paint, powder, food, wine. (One time or two, there was blood.) Usually all over the sheets as well.

His mouth’s a little open now. Even on his back, he’s quiet. Maybe he did all his roaring and growling as the Beast.

“He was so tired.” Belle looks as if she could do with a pillow and a sleep now, and why not? She’s been up for so long. “He was so excited about the ball, I think he wore the last of himself out.”

“Well. In one way, he’s still the same.” She should go now, she really should, Lumiere will be looking. “Or else he’s returned to that way.”

“He’s told me about the balls that he held. How everything was beautiful, and utterly shallow. This time he wants to invite everyone. He said he’ll never turn someone away again.” Belle shifts under his new weight, readjusting. “Was he really _that_ bad?”

It’s the way that she says it. Wondering, which is not the same as disbelieving. She already knows the man she loves was arrogant, thoughtless and cruel. _But how **much** ,_ is what she does and really doesn’t want to know.

She can tell the girl, “He was not a good man. Not an evil one yet, I don’t think so, but not good. He was never too cruel to his servants, but then he never paid much attention to most of us.”

She _could_ tell her: but there was one time when I’d opened up his curtains and turned to find him already sitting up further in bed and _looking_ at me, and something in the look that turned me cold and sick, as if I were an object or dog or horse that he was judging and wondering whether to buy, not excited, just considering. And clearly he decided I wasn’t beautiful enough for him, or else he wasn’t willing to lower himself to such dregs as a servant, especially not a _mullato_ servant, and I don’t know if his look or his dismissal had more terror for me.

“You should get him to bed,” is what she says in the end. “I’ll call someone to help you.”

“No need,” and Belle’s smiling again. “I got him to stand after the wolves, I can get him to bed now. He’s much less heavy, anyway.”

Which is true. And he’s more likely to listen to the brave, darling girl who owns him now, more than he ever owned anything or anyone in his life. That’s funny enough to make her laugh a little, and that’s enough to get her to her feet once more, because it’s astonishing how heavy being human is.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which there are stairs.
> 
> (I forsee this becoming a serious problem.)

**_Stairs._ **

“There are,” she says with Lumiere’s pulse on her lower lip, “far too many stairs. In this castle.”

“I do believe. That a few more sets of them may have. Grown in. Over the years.” One arm is so tight about her that the bones in it must be meeting with her spine.

“Really? I didn’t notice.” His fingers have come all the way back around to the front of her bodice, that must be it, his other hand is where she loves it on her cheek.

“You had. No need for them, after all. No feet to touch the ground.”

“The ground-”

He goes from the heart beat in her neck to the one in her arm, a brush of teeth in his lips this time. He holds her hand in his palm with his fingers still closed, stuck yet again. She wants more. Their fingers locked. One of them digging in nails so tenderly, enough that the other is gloriously trapped and blissful in their bonds.

They will have his fingers. Break down the candles and divide them up, he can learn their magic again just as she can learn to walk.   

Still. “Walking is not a thing I look forward to embracing once more. And all stairs are my enemy.”

He leaves off from her wrist and palm. Not what she wanted at all, not even when he brings her hand to rest on his heart, it was a _joke!_ Mostly a joke. “Truly? You think you will have trouble?”

Since, in the Prince’s house, there are many staircases. She’s nearly squashed between her Lumiere and a balustrade right now, she can crane her neck to look at another of the offending sets of stairs on the other side of the grand foyer. Entirely too many twists and turns. The steps taunt her.

“Could we persuade the Enchantress to take some of them back, do you think?”

He sees the joke in _that_ , thank goodness. “Perhaps after we get ourselves off this one, first?” He lets her loose, only because he means to gather her up and carry her.

Silly man! While he’s bending down to get a hand behind her legs, _that_ is when she slips from him to run up these particular steps. Only a few to the next floor is all, and his footsteps close behind give a burst of natural fear to get tired and whinging muscles going _properly_ _(_ it’s Lumiere. Lumiere is safe _)._

Think of the days when she led him a dance up and down the servants’ stairs, much steeper than these shallow things, and now! The castle bouteiller, chasing a maid up a grand staircase where before only persons of rank and servants of quality might walk, falling behind to let her reach the landing first! The mere maid, stopping as soon as her feet reach this new floor and letting him catch her, snatching her up lest she fall! For all the foyer to see!

“Bed,” he says and “Bed” she agrees, so bed it shall be. Thank God above there’s a concealed route to the servants’ quarters on this landing. She cannot and _will not_ climb any more stairs. She needs strong, well-rested legs for what’s coming. Weak ones will not suit the purpose, not at all!

To the door in his arms, out of his arms and to her feet so that she can fit. Into the passageway, the cramped but light (when was it so well-lit?) passageway. It’s close, hardly room for her to get through let alone Lumiere, and even with the Enchantress’s cleansing it’s stuffy, musty.

The way’s so narrow that he quite blocks the path to his bed. It would be _most_ unfair when they’d agreed on it just moments ago, only he doesn’t even realise because he wants to kiss what seems like every shred of skin that he can see; he’d be on his knees and have her skirts up if there was enough room. “I love you I love you I love you” to her neck wrist breasts, and isn’t it always the way when he’s so excited, he barely lets anyone else get a word in,

“I love you too, I love you only let me love _let me_ ”

so she gets his hand when it rests for an instant on her cheek again and slides her fingers between his. _That’s_ stopped his campaign. He’s so shocked that she’s able to seize his other hand, palm to palm this time. She presses as she’d imagined and makes his fingers rise. She oddly thinks of her tail in her old body, her late body, the feeling of raising it up and spreading it wide.

She kisses his fingertips, the sides of his fingers with the gap in-between each set, the knuckle of his thumb and then his palm on the other side, until his fingers are relaxing in pleasure.

She lets one hand go to touch his chin, rouse him into burning again. “Darling? Please, _bed.”_


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which the heat begins to ramp up.

Whoever left the fresh sheets also left the full basin and jug, the dish of soap, the small fire to heat water, and also a candle already lit in the holder to see all these things by. As well as, yes, what prove to be a dozen more new candles on the bed, finest beeswax, never used.

All of which is somewhat and somehow _more_ alarming than a feast from nowhere, stocked larders and even new bedding with the covers turned down, ready. Waiting. It’s most flattering and awkward that such a…lady, let’s say, has enough interest in them, that she’s smoothed the path to their lovemaking as if they were nobles. Or at least newly married –

-her stomach dances at that thought, _married._

She wonders, what’s waiting for Belle and the Prince, in whatever chamber the girl manages to get them to in the end? Did the Enchantress prepare _all_ the rooms for just such a purpose? Is she still watching them all from somewhere or everywhere or nowhere?

If that is the case, depart please, gracious lady! Your work is **_done_! ** She’s grateful for all the trimmings of welcome and comfort, but they are no prince and his contracted bride that need to be dryly observed throughout the procedure. Not even by unseen eyes. Besides which, their first consummation of love is already decades ago now.

No more thought on it. Lumiere has a candle wedged between thumb and fingers, catching at the flame. Only a little worrying, a little, to see him smile so. It’s a candle. How many of them has he lit and snuffed out in his time?

Together they drip the wax, stick candles about the rim of the holder. Four in all, or five counting the one in the centre. Together they’re more than bright enough to let them see what they’ll be doing in the bed.

Not enough, Lumiere will have more candles. “I want to see you in the light.” They stick more to the lid of the chest against the wall, that he hasn’t opened in eons, is there anything left of the clothes inside? Can’t check until morning now. Two for the window ledge after he’s reached and wrestled the shutters closed. Three, no, four for the mantle above the fire, one on either side of the hearth where’s there’s stone and nothing to catch and hold a spark.

More candles! She thinks: _let there be light_ , and there is light, there is more than enough light for what she wants. She would have thought they’d run through the dozen candles by now. Apparently not. “Love, _enough?”_

He turns. He is smiling. The smile is a little too turned inwards, like a mask, even for her Lumiere. It may be that he does not even see her.

Did he think of the Enchantress as well? Is he delaying ( ** _not_** regretting) the moment? Or putting it off altogether? And really, the flames are so very lovely, he might want to simply watch them until they all gutter out, only then going to sleep.

Then his smile goes and his eyes come back to her.

“I am sorry, my darling. Yes, enough.” He goes to snuff out the latest, the last candle, and yelps with the betrayal when the flame nips him hard. She _does_ try not to laugh “I think,” drawing himself up with mock pride, “I was bidding farewell. It will be hard to go back to making light in the usual fashion.”

It is not that she allows it, more than she understands it. “One more candle, then.” She apologises by holding out her arms to welcome him; he sticks the latest last candle in some not quite cooled wax of the second to last candle. Eager, isn’t he?

So soft.

So much is soft. Or if it isn’t (rough embroidery on his coat, horse hair of his wig, stubble that’s grown out since the morning) it’s beaten by the feel of silk around the stitches, his true hair underneath the horse’s, his scalp between those hairs, his mouth.

She’s between his head and the wig now, it’s riding on the backs of her hands like a roosting bird, like. Well. Like nothing so much as-

“What’s so funny?”

“Your _wig!_ I never realised before! It looks just like a leftover candle, all the heaped wax-”

She ends up falling back onto the bed, he lets her go that fast; she laughs harder as he whips it off his head to examine. He glares. Now the wig is treacherous too! He’d put it down, only he seems to have stuck yet another candle on top of his wig rest. Everything is against him!

He huffs all dramatic and adorable, as he breaks the candle off its perch to settle the wig. “I have a most hard-hearted mistress. That much is clear.”

She’d stand up to go to him, only – well. She’s _much_ too comfortable here, after all day on feet that haven’t existed for twenty years, and were apparently not happy to come back from wherever they’d been sent to. She settles for pushing up on one elbow and reaching out with the unoccupied arm. “No, never that. A light-hearted mistress! Help me out of my hair, too?”

His grin charges right at her as he takes a running jump, **_plump!_** right down beside her, his weight out of nowhere nearly pushing her back to her feet. She squeals, swats him, only the swat turns into a grab and pull for him to get closer.

They work to liberate her hair, the work of more than a few moments, but when compared to the hours she put into the style before that fated fateful ball! Feathers float about the room, they are carried up by the heat haze of candles, more feathers than - when she strains to recall – she believes she ever put in her tresses that last night. “Though you did wake up in a bed of them,” Lumiere reminds them both.

He cards his hands through the cloud about her. He’s so gentle that if there‘s a tangle he never snags or rips it. He presses on her scalp and the skull beneath. He holds her head with fingers spread, no more candles too close to blind her, or burn her crest until it grows back.

She holds him the way she used to with her feathers, but they’re good strong fingers now and brown again, brown to his pale where he was bronze to her ivory, what a piece of work that curse was! She can’t decide what to look at: her hands with fingers into his hair, or his face between those palms and fingers.

“Love you love you love you-”

Consummated long ago, yes _yes_ , but it’s been so long _too_ long in another castle and another country, they’re really coming together as if it’s the first time in this bedroom ages ago, more, when she dared come to him in just her shift and a blanket, sick with fear, while he’d paced for hours in nothing but his shirt and his own terror. Or, or that first time in the alcove when he lifted up her skirts and she wormed her way past his tight, uncaring cloth to, oh, _how much longer_? Must we be _always_ waiting and waiting?

“Soft, soft.” He pulls his hands from her hair to run down over her breasts, nearly down _under_ her bodice. Recalls himself and stays on top, getting to the side that has the fastening. “Help me?”  

She seats herself firm in his lap once more. She’ll have to move when the breeches need to come off; it still leaves her plenty of time to work on his neckcloth, while he works at her front. Her dress loosens so that she can feel the heat under it and the wet, the way her shift comes away with her gown but still wants to cling to her skin. A moist heat.

The only thing that she has to compare it to in recent memory: the times when she went out into the snow to dance until her wings and tail were heavy with the flakes and the cold, shaking herself off as she came back in but still needing to dry herself before the kitchen fire, with Lumiere holding his candles over her tail, pampering and tending her, the closest he’s ever able to bring his flames (hands) to her tail (feet).

She shifts on her one crossed leg while the other one wraps around his waist, the heat growing, a moist wet heat.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm uncertain as to whether Plumette's lovely white hairdo is, in fact, a wig or not. I suspect it is, since it has a Rococo feel and the same tail down the back as Lumiere's, and some artists (such as Spectral-Musette on Tumblr http://spectral-musette.tumblr.com/tagged/Lumiere%2FPlumette) depict Plumette with natural hair under the wig, but I decided to leave it ambiguous.


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which a little of what you fancy does you good.

These are the things you remember (learn) remember that you like, after years of no flesh and a whole day of having it returned to you. Things like:

The taste of whatever he last drank (wine, quite good from what little she knows) as she runs her tongue under his to catch the hints of it, down into one of the hollows of his mouth.

Her weight upon him, in his lap, not too heavy but maddening when she moves, don’t stop, Lord, **_please._**

His fingers, of course! Turns out they don’t need to be too clever to free her, make her stays gape, don’t need genius or inspiration to cup one breast or stroke at her back to pull her closer.

Her hand between his shoulders, tips pressing hard, not with her nails, they both remember they both don’t (didn’t) care for that, only now he _likes_ her nails: “Make me feel it, love.” And then her tugging at his coat to get it off and away, her tongue and teeth on his shoulder, nails coming through the waistcoat, the shirt, both, digging in.

His fighting, playful, trying to get his head down beside hers, get back to her breasts.

How easy it is to unbutton his waistcoat and his shirt, pull them apart to get at _his_ breast and heart, his nipple growing hard and small when she brushes it feather-light.

How her hair smells of the powder of the wig and the last drops of a perfume still caught in the strands, and underneath the smell of _her her her_ , his fingers are slick on her scalp with her.

His fascination with her stockings, trying to remember the skill of untying a ribbon, only to get lost when he strays to the skin of a thigh.

His talk of “yours yours only yours utterly yours” stopping the instant she first touches, then _strokes_ to find the shape of him beneath the satin. His trying to start chattering again, only ever getting as far as ah, _“ah.”_

Her feet in their shoes, not as tiny as Perrault’s Cendrillon but still suited for dancing and prancing, and certainly for finer shoes than those appropriate for a maid, only she’d despise them as more torture for her poor feet. His kiss upon her ankle, her heel warm as the shoe comes off and hot down at her toes.

His willingness to kiss her feet, and he’s just fortunate she hasn’t been dashing around enough for them to be soaked in sweat, her toes grown ripe! Her silly darling man. “Come up here.”

Her command, he more than likes that. Loves, adores it. On his way up he kisses her calf through the stocking, her knee both fore and aft, chooses to linger on the inside of her thigh, staying in the warm and scent of her.

That he’s always thinking of her pleasure above his. “Further up,” she says as she manages to prop herself up to see him over the cloud of her skirts, “up here.” And as he sighs and grins and approaches, her fingers remember this quite well, have the catch of his breeches flicked undone and she’s goes beneath the satin now, around his back and below the small of it to clasp, pull him into her.

Her never wicked but most mischievous smile, turning thoughtful – dare he think, pertly innocent? – as she rubs with one hand and scratches with the other, and he must kiss her to make her stop **_or never stop_** , getting a clumsy hand under her head to lift her up.

His confident blaze just a little fuzzy with the feel of it all, not stupid (yet) with desire and pleasure and soft and scratching.

They like – _like_ is not the right word, not _gladness,_ but it is still good that they both remember at the same time, that they can see it in the other’s face and that they act at once with no discussion. That it’s not a case of one deciding first and pushing or yanking the other, or needing to fuss about it. She gets a leg over his hip again, he gets that arm wormed beneath her shoulders now, and then he is no longer up above or she down below; they face each other side to side and both in the others arms, yes, yes, not just her in his embrace as he looks down. Not that just yet.

A little wait longer, it seems, while he rests in the crook of her neck until his breath comes easy again. She will stroke his hair with the arm that’s become his pillow. She’ll stroke him with her other arm, _exactly_ where it was before they moved, so that it might be his breath won’t calm after all.

She remembers that she liked, _likes_ this part of him very much indeed. Not above all else, but enough that she is very pleased to be reacquainted.  

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I tried, guys. I tried to write smut. I am no good with the smut. 
> 
> I am ashamed.


End file.
